Those Who Linger
by La Guera
Summary: The Lothlorien elves march to slaughter, leaving those left behind to pick up the pieces. Dedicated to the Godawful Fanfiction crew.


Disclaimer:  This is based on Peter Jackson's Movieverse.  As such, it contravenes canon.  Tolkien purists easily vexed should probably avoid this.  All characters belong to J.R.R. Tolkien.  No infringement intended.  Dedicated to the wonderful savagery of the people at GodAwful Fan Fiction.  Merry Christmas.

13 Firith

     My Haldir has gone to war.  I watch him walk away with his last kiss still tingling upon my lips.  He is so proud, so strong as he walks away.  If there is fear or doubt, it does not show upon his stern face, regal with the blessedly infuriating hauteur I have come to know and love so well.  It shows only the same dedication to duty it always has, the same honor, the same dignity.  My heart swells with pride for him even as it breaks in two. 

     Tears streak down my face as I watch him disappear from beyond the golden-shaded borders of Lothlorien.  I know I should not cry, should not burden him with my pain atop everything else that he must bear, but I cannot help it.  Nor am I the only one.  Every elf-warrior among our number is answering the call, and the other elf-maidens weep as I do and clasp fingers with their beloveds for a fleeting moment before the insistent march calls them away.  Only Lady Galadriel is serene.  Her husband will not march with the rest.  He has already served his people long and well, as has she.  We will ask no more of them.

     There are no children among us to cry out for their fathers, and that is a blessing.  To hear such pitiful laments would shatter the fragile composure of both the women and the marching ranks, so precious are our children to us.  There have been no children born unto the Golden Wood in nearly two hundred years.  We no longer have need of them.  The Valar are calling us home again, and very soon we shall leave these shores forever.

     We watch the warriors until they are beyond the scope of our keen eyes, until even the twinkling of their armor is diminished beyond discernment.  Slowly, most of the other maidens drift away, return to their lonely, forlorn flets.  Some of us remain, we wives and daughters of the vanguard.  We linger long after darkness has blanketed everything, ignorant of the cold and soughing wind.  We know not for what we wait, we simply understand that our burden is the greater.  Our husbands are the captains, commanders, and generals, and at them will the fiercest of arrows be loosed.  Ours will likely be the voices to rise in lament when the survivors, weary and wounded return home again.

     One by one, we silent wraiths drift away like tendrils of sleepy fog, bound for the places that will bring us the most comfort on this cheerless night.  Soon I am alone, a solitary figure flitting lightly among the trees.  My eyes search for what I know I will not find.  He will not return so quickly.  The stars keep me company in my lonely vigil until I accept what cannot be changed.  The moon caresses my tear-stained face as I return to the flet that suddenly seems so very cold.  Before I retreat to safer dreams, I beg the Valar to return my Haldir to me.  My Haldir, captain of the Lady's guard, marching like an unseen shadow, to the killing fields of Helm's Deep.

21 Firith,

     Eight days have passed since the warriors of the Galadhrim forsook the haven they have always known in pursuit of the perils of war.  Never in all the long ages of my life have I been so acutely aware of the passage of days, of minutes of hours.  These are the worries of Men, not of Elves.  We are as long-lived as the Earth, unmindful of the changing of seasons, for we know that seasons without number are left to us.  Yet I find myself remarking the movement of the sun across the heavens and the shifting of the stars in the firmament of night.  As the sun sinks, deposed by daughter moon, so, too, does my heart sink inside my chest, burdened with another night without Haldir at my side.

     The yellow leaves of the Wood shiver and rustle in mournful accompaniment to the unceasing laments that ring through our forest home, each elf-maiden giving voice to the private fears of her heart.  The nightingales have fallen silent in the face of the broken choruses we send to the heavens.  I, too, have lifted my voice in desperate plea to the heavens to bring my love home again, though I cannot bear to sing too long.  It seems too much like a funeral dirge, and I do not wish to curse my love with foolish prophecy.

     Silence reigns where once there was quiet chatter and laughter.  There is little to do with our warriors gone-no clothes to mend, no washing, no sewing.  We go about our lives as best we can, harvesting vegetables and baking bread.  There is little talk among the maidens; we fear the tide will turn to the topic of war.  We mostly sit in companionable silence, gazing at each other or up at the sunfire canopy of our forest with hooded eyes.  To busy our hands we plait one another's hair.  Sometimes, the pain of separation overwhelms one of our number, and she weeps bitter tears.  We reach out in mute compassion, knowing there is naught else that we can do.  Only time and reunion can heal the secret wounds of her heart.

     Alone at night in the flet I have shared with Haldir for ages uncounted, my thoughts turn to him and to the evil that has brought us to this terrible precipice.  I wonder where he is at this moment, my sun-kissed champion with a glorious golden crown, what he is doing.  For three thousand years in the reckoning of Men have we been joined, heart and soul.  Only once in all that time have we been parted.  For three days and nights, he led a group of warriors in pursuit of a band of orcs that were despoiling the borders of Lothlorien with their foul, cruel axes.  He returned to me stinking of their blood, and we crept down to the waters of the mighty Anduin to bathe.  There in the rushing waters, we cleansed one another, murmuring in the silvery moonlight and delighting in the delicate coolness of the water.  Then, as we had not done in many months, we coupled sweetly on the banks, intoxicated by the scent of fresh earth.  Urgently, eagerly, would I couple with him now if he were within my reach, but when I reach for him now, my questing fingers find only the down reeds of our bed.

     Does he miss me?  Does he worry for me?  Does he count the days until he returns to my side?  I do all of these things.  When each dawn fails to find him returning, streaked with the filth of battle to my arms, I search for him with the magical bond between our two hearts, a bond forged the moment we first linked hands.  I breathe a trifle easier when I find the living warmth of his _fea_ within the walls of my heart, but the despair is not lessened.  It remains haunched on my chest like an infected poultice, heavy with memories of the days before the darkness returned.  I cannot flee these recollections, nor would I if I could.

     How I long to see his erect, commanding form at his normal post on the fringes of this enchanted harbor from the ill winds just past the last majestic mallorn tree, his piercing eyes ever vigilant against threats to his sacred home.  I miss the crisp sound of his voice as he calls out to those in his charge to investigate every odd rustling that reaches his sharp ears.  I miss the smoky, brittle-leaved scent of his tunic as he pulls me to him every morning and evening, its rough surface prickling my skin.  I miss the furtive touch of his hand against my cheek before he sets off with a scouting party to patrol our borders.  I miss the way he gently slides his chest from beneath my head as I wander in waking dreams, trying not to rouse me.  I have never told him that he has never yet succeeded in this.  What I miss the most is his smile, not the haughty, aloof smirk the world sees, but the one reserved only for me, the one that lights his entire face and makes all the years we have passed together seem but a moment.  That smile is more necessary to me, to my survival, than a cool draught of water or the air filling my lungs.  I crave it more than the light of the sun.

     Galadriel comes to us, the waiting maidens and watchers on the riverbanks, nearly every day, moving among us, the mercy of the Valar made flesh.  She knows our fears and the deep places of our hearts better than the men for whom we watch, for she has seen it all in her unfaltering Mirror.  With a look or a touch, she seeks to reassure us, though she knows from long experience that not all who left will return again.  She knows already the fates of our dearest, but she says nothing, giving no comfort and inflicting no grief.  And we do not ask her.  We do not want to know.  We cling to our ignorance like a child to his mother's skirts, and each day we pray for the impossible.

     I do not understand why my husband has gone to fight.  None of us do.  There was much talk about honoring the old alliances, the alliances between Elves and Men.  Haldir spoke long of it to me as we lay in our bed the night before he left.  He told me of the ages before, when the Elven-folk united with the world of Men to drive back the poison darkness from the earth.  He said the time had now come for the people of the Wood to honor the ancient allegiances.  That was important to him, to honor the days of old.  So he has always been.  He cherishes his honor as his lifeblood.  The call to arms by the Lady was something he could not ignore.

     Why should we trouble ourselves with the affairs of Men?  The fate of Middle-Earth is no longer in our hands.  We are departing from its shores, leaving for the eternal bliss of the Undying Lands.  Long have Men sought dominion over all the land.  Now they shall have it, and all the problems such dominion brings.  If they should claim all the greatest triumphs, then let them also accept all the crushing failures, even unto the destruction of the world.

     I wish I had gone with him, clad in the armor of my people and marching toward the massing enemy horde.  It is not custom for our maidens to pick up bows or blades, but we have done so when given no other choice.  We, like our warrior mates, despise the dark creatures that befoul this land and take great delight in slaughtering them all.  Even if I had no skill with any weapon crafted, still I would follow him and fight at his side, hurling heavy stones down upon the heads of our enemies if that were all I could manage.  It would be far better to die at his side, my blood staining the dusty ground, than to endure these long, uncertain hours alone.  I envy Lady Galadriel and her peace at having her mate by her side.  I can only hope I am so lucky.

3 Rhiw,

     I am awakened in the night by a fearful, stricken cry.  It is all around me, this cry, a single shout of crushing despair by many voices.  I rush from my flet, my heavy heart thundering in my chest.  Several other maidens have done the same.  The cry is long and anguished, a soul-searing wail, and instantly we know what it means.  The battle is begun, and our warriors have begun to fall.  More shrieks come, spreading like plague through the scattered flets.  Those of us not gripped in the throes of agonized grief move quickly, rushing to comfort the dazed and wailing, all the while thanking the Valar that we are not yet among them.

     Galadriel comes down to us, her sapphire eyes reflecting the agony of those who have lost.  It is the least she can do; it is she, willingly or no, who has brought them to this.  Lord Celeborn comes too, a quiet presence amid the hysteria.  The moonlight glitters in his silver hair as eyes that have seen the beginnings of the world, now look upon one of the last days our kind will ever see.  The melancholy in them is staggering.  

     The Lady is stroking the hair of a young elf maiden who kneels shrieking against her stomach.  The pain and despair in that voice is as a physical blow to her, and she closes her eyes against it.  A tear rolls down her cheek.  The maiden shrieks a name over and over, and I first I do not understand it, but then I do.  _Firred_   I reel in shock.  Firred was a young elf lad with hair as red as fire, and though I did not know him well, he was often picked by Haldir as a member of his scouting parties.  Now he is gone, one corpse heaped among many, his tunic made as red as his hair by his blood.

     I reach for a maiden who sits slumped and howling against a mallorn tree, her blonde tresses spilling around her red, tear-stained face in mad profusion.  She is hot and fevered to the touch, like the banked embers of a cooking fire.  Her grief consumes her from the inside out.  The wails are terrible and incoherent, and I waste no time trying to interpret them.  I croon soothing nonsense that falls upon deaf ears.  The dead cannot be resurrected with words.

     Suddenly, my heart swells with Haldir's presence.  I can feel him seeking me across the miles.  I release the sobbing maiden and turn instinctively to the north, caught between ecstasy and terror.  For one fleeting instant we are connected, our _fea_ melded seamlessly, one into another.  Then, as quickly as the splintering of bone, the bond that has united us for centuries beyond reckoning is sundered, his light extinguished.  He is gone.

     I stand frozen for a moment, searching frantically for him with every fiber of my being, but he is not there.  My knees, already unsteady from such a barrage of outpoured lament from my fellow maidens, buckle, and I sink to the moist earth, my hands uplifted in supplication.  This cannot be the end.  Not for us.  In a short passing of a season, we were to leave for Valinor, there to dwell together in eternal joy.  He would not forsake me, not now.  For us, there was to be no end.  He swore it to me on the night of our joining, and he has ever fulfilled his oaths.

     I drop my hands and crawl along the ground, my fingers clawing and gouging the earth, as if I will find hidden beneath the rich soil the means to reconnect to the spirit I have held within my heart so long.  I can no longer breathe; all the air has been driven from my lungs by crushing loss.  The screams that have torn from the throats and lips of the others are now building in my own chest, but I hesitate to give them voice, life.  To do so would make the void in my heart real, and that I cannot allow.  I will not be so faithless.  My fingers scrape the edge of a boot, and through the thick veil of my hair I see Lord Celeborn standing over me.

     I wrap my hands around his calves and press my face into his knees.  I cannot rise.  All strength left me the moment Haldir's soul fled this earth.  The urge to weep is a torment greater than fire, and I gasp against the pressure.  Though I do not yet sob and wail and shriek, I whine, a sharp, lost sound that I cannot control.  Hands grip my arms and pull me to my feet, and I sway drunkenly against the Lord of Lothlorien.  He looks down into my face, and though his face is as serene as it has ever been, his eyes are full of pity.

     "It is no shame to cry for that which is lost, my child," he says in his haunting lilt, and my determination not to surrender to my grief wavers.

     I look to the Lady of the Wood, seeking solace, but there is none to be found.  She watches her broken subjects with compassionate eyes, but she sheds no tears, and this makes me furious.  For more than three thousand years, my Haldir has been the captain of her guard and her guardian, willing to sacrifice himself for her without question, yet she mourns him not.  She simply stands there, a majestic ice queen, above the pain and ugliness of death and the agony it brings to those left behind.  And why not?  She did not offer up her own husband in exchange for the lives of men?  I hate her.  

     "He was captain of your guard," I roar.  "Is your heart so hard that you cannot weep for him?"

     She recoils from the venom in my voice, and I drop my gaze in shame.  I have caused the Lady great hurt for that which she cannot change.  I draw away from Lord Celeborn and await rebuke, but to my surprise he only pulls my head to the sparse comfort of his shoulder.  At last my grief finds its voice, and I weep and scream mindlessly, punishing the silence for its indifference to what we have lost.  Lord Celeborn does not flinch, though my keening wails must be as dwarven mallets to his keen ears.  He stands as still and immutable as one of the mallorn that has sheltered us, weathering the bereaved torrent as he has so many other dangers.

     So deep is my grief that I am only dimly aware of his parting.  Without the support of his strong frame, I wilt once more to the ground, a willow tree hewn down by the merciless scythe.  They are leaving, retreating to the sanctuary of their flet perched in the highest bough of the highest tree, fleeing from the tragedy their agonizing decision has wrought.  We weeping maidens do not note their absence.  It matters not.  We have lost everything in a single night, and that is all we can see.

     More and more join the ranks of the ravaged throughout the night.  Fresh wails and screams rend the night, re-igniting those whose misery had momentarily waned.  The Wood rings with the pleas of the damned, its golden leaves bearing silent witness to the sorrow of the elf-maidens of Lorien.

33 Rhiw,

     Once more the women of Lothlorien gather upon the borders of the Wood, this time to welcome the warriors home again.  For most of us there is no joyous expectation of blessed, wondrous reunion.  The blackness in our hearts where once love and peace did dwell has told us already what awaits us.  We are not gifted ignorance.  Those lucky few-and there are far, far too few-who have been spared the terrible curse of loss stand bunched together, apart from those who grieve.  Perhaps they fear we resent them; they are right, but there is not one among us who would not gladly join them if we could.  Those who wait in vain and know it link hands, seeking what comfort they can from the touch of another.  

     The winking of the sun against armor heralds the arrival of what remains of our warriors.  They straggle toward home in a thin, pitiful line, their faces haggard and filthy from the battle.  Some  bear obvious wounds, others only the slightest of rapidly fading scars.  When they see us waiting for them, they give a hopeful, strangled shout and put on speed, hastening toward the love and succor they know they will find here.

     Those who still have hope rush out to hug the evidence of the Valar's mercy to them, giddy with relief, offering aid to those who limp or falter.  The lost remain behind, jostling and craning to see if they can spot a friend, at least, among the survivors.  Though I know it cannot be, I scan the line in the vain hope that the message in my heart is mistaken, that it is not death that has stopped Haldir's voice, but merely a grievous wound or a deep unconsciousness.  I find what I expected.  Nothing.  My captain is not among the living.

     I spot the weary, hunched figure of Rumil, his brother, staggering toward the safety of the trees.  I run to him, thankful that his kinsman still draws breath.  He is filthy, caked in the festering, stinking, black blood of the orc.  His armor is notched and battered, a testimony to the ferocity of the war he has raged.  He staggers, limping badly on a leg that has been gored by an orcish blade and clumsily wrapped.  I reach out to steady him.

     "Rumil!" I cry in a high, wavering voice, putting a steadying arm around his waist.

     His head jerks up, his eyes wide and startled.  He relaxes as recognition dawns.  He clasps me to him so fervently that my bones creak.  "Mae govannen," he says, "I abandoned all hope of ever looking upon the Wood or any friendly face again."  Then he falters and his face grows dark.

     I ask, though I have known the answer since the Great Lament of four weeks past.  I have to.  "Where is Haldir?" 

     He sways slightly, then puts his hands upon my cheeks.  They are trembling.  "He…he…fell.  Orophin, too.  They died well," he chokes in a broken, halting voice, and then he weeps, his shoulders quaking with the force of his sobs.

     Though I have known this in my heart, the words are as poison to my soul.  A wretched howl wrenches from my throat, and I fall against him.  He stumbles on his injured leg but does not fall.  We cling to each other, bound in our mutual grief, drowning in it.  We weep until we are hollow inside, and when we draw apart, we find that we are alone on the rolling plain that skirts the wood.  The others have returned to the security of their much-missed flets.

     "But where is his body, if he is truly dead?"  I ask in a raw voice.  We Elves never forsake our dead for the carrion fowl, yet though our casualties must have been unfathomable; none of the returning heroes has borne a body, neither on litters nor in their arms.

     Rumil's already ashen skin goes grayer still, and he looks like he may retch.  He composes himself quickly, but my shattered heart lurches in my chest.  I do not want to hear this.  "Tens of thousands of them met us at Helm's Deep.  There has never been a greater army in all of Middle Earth.  They were as a black flood, swarming like flies upon a corpse.  Aragorn ordered us to fall back.  Haldir fell leading us to the keep.  I could not go to him.  He was…despoiled.  He could not be recovered.  None of them could."

     Rumil has no more tears to shed, no more despair to lay bare before the world.  His haunted grey eyes are dry and his voice firm as he tells me this.  He has had a month to come to terms with this news.  For me, this is a new indignity, and I sit down hard upon the grass, my fingers clawed in my matted hair.  Despoiled.  My beautiful Haldir, my champion, a work of beauty even among Elven-kind, despoiled.  It is too much to bear, and I moan.  It is beyond comprehension that the Valar should permit such sacrilege.  My mind whirls and burns with grotesque images.  How dare those filthy, unholy things deign to blight my Haldir with their touch, to tear his hair and rip his flesh, to consume him like common victuals.  My fingers dig into my scalp, harrowing bright weals of scarlet blood.  The world begins to spin, and I teeter on the brink of madness.

     Something soft brushes my face, and my nostrils are filled with Haldir's smoky, brittle-leaved scent.  I look up to see Rumil holding out a tattered ruby cloak, and I reach for it as though it were the light of Earendil.  It is Haldir's cloak, the one I made for him in the fall of ten years past.  It was his favorite, and he wore it into battle hoping it would bring him luck.  I clutch it to my face and inhale his scent, oblivious to the tacky feel of dried blood.  As my fingers bunch and fondle the precious fabric that is all I have left of my mate, they discover a gaping rend in its design.  Unfurling it, I see the gaping, bleeding gash that tells the story of my husband's doom.  A terrible hope flickers in my breast.

     "Rumil, did the _fea_ of my beloved flee its bodily vessel before he was…despoiled?" I croak.

     He nods.  "He went to his rest in the arms of Lord Aragorn.  If there were but the faintest hope that he yet lived, he would never have left him, even if meant his own death."

     I nod.  I know nothing of Aragorn, save that he once passed through Lorien, but if Rumil is confident of this, then I have no reason to doubt him.  His love for Haldir was no less than mine, and only the absolute certainty that Haldir was in Mandos would have brought him here alone and empty-handed.

     He groans, and I realize how selfish I have been, wallowing in my grief while his wound throbs and burns.  I scramble to my feet.  "Forgive me, Rumil."  I offer him my shoulder, and together we lurch and stagger to the homes, that, for the first time, hold no joy for us.

     The air is heavy with a smell the winds of Lothlorien have never carried before-the coppery, rich stink of blood.  From the flets come muffled groans and sobs as wives and mothers tend to the bruised, broken bodies of their husbands and sons.  In the middle of the path lies the discarded armor and weaponry of the returned warriors.  Dented breastplates, cloven pauldrons, battered helms, broken swords.  It is a sad, brutal sight.  Had there been any justice, the pile would have been a golden mountain.  It is little more than a trodden, sunken hillock.  I turn away, unable to bear it, for I know what it means for me and for my people.

     I start to guide Rumil into his flet, but he stiffens, refusing to continue forward.  For a moment I am confused, but then I understand.  He does not want to face the flet he has shared with Orophin since childhood; it holds too many memories for him of happier, better times.  Ghosts dwell there now, and for a little while, he desires to be beyond their reach.  I turn to the neighboring flet instead, the flet I shared with Haldir.  It has its own phantoms, ones that chill me to the marrow, ones with which I undoubtedly cannot cope.  But Rumil needs attention and rest, a respite from the pain that has dogged him for all these long days, and so we go inside.

     Reminders of Haldir are everywhere, and I let out a rasping, hiccoughing sob as I lead his kin to our bed.  None but I or Haldir have ever lain there.  I help Rumil to lie down and fall back, my calm resolve shattered once more.  That he should be here and Haldir naught but broken bone is surreal.  His presence is all around me.  His smell permeates the very walls of our flet.  Some of his things are still on the table where he left them-a delicate mallorn leaf clasp, a piece of twine for his hair, a few half-made arrows.  His light grey cloak still lies draped over the back of a chair in the corner.  I spin in slow, dazed circles, trying to understand that which is beyond my ability to grasp.  Death is not a word easily spoken or understood by my kind.  Yet it has stricken Haldir down, and that which was before but a myth is now my reality.

     Rumil says nothing, though it is plain from the way he grimaces that he is mightily in need of comfort.  He lies quietly, respecting my stunned bewilderment, for not so long ago, he was in the throes of the same confusion.  His eyes follow my wavering path around the flet as I drift blindly from place to place, my hands fluttering numbly over objects Haldir often handled, trying to draw his essence from their depths.  Without thinking, I grip his shortbow, fingers seizing around the smooth wood.  He used it every day, and I hold it before me, gazing at it as if I have never seen it before.

      Finally, I come to myself again and set off in search of water to clean Rumil.  In one hand I carry a silver pitcher.  In the other, Haldir's bow lies in my limp fingers.  There are other women at the banks of the river when I reach it, each doing the same as I.  It is silent except for the swish of water filling an assortment of vessels.  A young maiden looks at me, her eyes glistening with relieved tears, but she looks away again when she does not find the same exultation in my own.  I return to the flet without a word.

     I peel off Rumil's dirty clothes and bathe him, dipping a piece of cloth into the cool water and favoring his skin with slow, gentle strokes.  I am careful to avert my eyes from unchaste places.  He closes his eyes gratefully and lets me tend him.  The wound in his leg is healing, but it is still ragged.  Thankfully, it is not infected by foul orcish poison.  He hisses when the cloth grazes the open gash.

     "I am sorry, but I must clean it," I tell him.

     He nods.  I resume my work, dabbing as gently as I can.  Still, he flinches and grits his teeth.  I am sorry to cause him pain.  Since I could not do this for Haldir, I am determined to do it well for him.  When it is as clean as I can manage, I set about making an herbal poultice to speed healing.  I have had no practice at this, and the work is laboriously slow.  When it is done, I slather it onto a swatch of fabric I had intended to use to make a new tunic for Haldir.

     My hands shake as I bind his wound.  "There.  That should do, but perhaps the Lady should look at it."

     "No, you have done well," he says.  His face is drawn and pale.

     I go to the wardrobe where our clothes are kept and begin looking for fresh clothes for him.  My vision blurs with tears as I sort through the leggings and tunics that will never again nestle my love's flesh.  Fingers trail the hems of elegant robes.  Will this terrible grief never cease its assault?  I snatch some things and slam the door.  I turn to see Rumil watching me with calm sympathy.

     "Here.  They should fit."  I thrust the clothes at him.  Not wishing to see him dress, I ask, "Are you hungry?"  

     "Yes.  It has been long since I've tasted anything but lembas."

     I leave, eager to escape the suddenly claustrophobic flet.  I take greedy gulps of air as I head for the small garden to the rear of the tree I call home.  Out here the weight of loss is not so crushing.  I gather up onions and tomatoes and potatoes in my arms and take them to the clearing that serves as our cooking pit.  Several fires are already blazing.  I settle down to work only to realize that I have forgotten to bring pot, water, or knife.  I rise to return to the flet for them, but a gentle hand catches my wrists.

     "Stay."

     It is an elf-maiden, young, with shimmering flaxen hair.  Her blue eyes glitter brightly from dark hollows.  Her nose and eyelids are raw from weeping.  She looks as haggard and lost as I feel.  It is as though the taint of age has reached her at last.  Her skin is cold.  In her free hand, she holds a knife.  "You can use mine," she offers.

     "I still have neither pot nor water."

     "I have water," she says, gesturing to a half-filled pitcher beside her knee.  "And you can use my pot when I am finished.  It won't be long now."

     The plea in her voice is unmistakable.  I hesitate for a moment, torn between my desire to be alone with my grief and my need to be with another that has suffered the same cruelty, and then I sit.  The gratitude on her face is paralyzing.  She passes me the pitcher.  I spread the vegetables out on the ground, and one by one I pick them up and drizzle water over them.  It is a half-hearted attempt and washing them, but anything more is beyond me for now.  My anguish has wrung every ounce of energy from bones that suddenly feel too heavy.  When that is done, I gather them onto my lap and begin to cut them, letting the chunks fall to the sagging cradle of my skirt.

     We sit in silence for a spell, I cutting the potatoes, and she stirring her simmering stew.  The easy chatter of our kind is a distant memory now.  Unspoken words thicken the air around us.  No words can properly convey the aching emptiness inside us now, and yet there is no need for explanation.  It is enough to sit here in the fading twilight by a flickering fire and ponder our ruined fortunes together.

     My mind drifts as I slice, my hands moving automatically.  I remember other twilights by the cooking fire, these far more pleasant.  Haldir bending over the kettle, his face a mask of noble hauteur as he inspects what I prepare.  His impish smile when I have done well.  Feast days and all the Galadhrim thronged around the fires in celebration, the mouth-watering tang of roasting meat hanging in the air, and the men trying to outdo one another with their cooking prowess.  All gone.  All of it, wiped out in a single battle.

     "Five hundred years."  My companion's voice startles me.  "Five hundred years we were joined.  We were going to Valinor soon.  Three weeks from this night, we would have set forth for the Grey Havens, out of the reach of war and death.  But Men, weak, greedy, power-hungry Men have destroyed it all."  This last was an accusatory shriek.  She falls silent, chest hitching.  She was clearly on the verge of hysteria.

     Hearing that accusation against the world of Men from lips not my own is like a balm to my soul.  I have feared that I am alone in my hatred of Men, in my blame of them.  But now I have found a kindred soul, I am vindicated.  Some may say that Sauron, not Men, has wrought this evil, and maybe he has, but Men are the ones who allowed the Ring to endure, and they are the ones who were too weak to finish what Isildur began with his treachery; it was they who needed us save them from themselves.

     "Haldir was a great warrior of our people," she said quietly.

     "Oooooooh," is all I can muster.  Something inside is breaking, groaning beneath the weight of unexpressed misery.  Her acknowledgment of Haldir's valor shatters my restraint.  I throw back my head and howl, the sound churning up from my bowels.  My throat is straining with the force of my screams.  I clutch blindly at the arm that enfolds me and rock back and forth, tears burning a trail down my cheeks.

     My companion weeps with me, not for Haldir, but for her own lost love.  The sound lifts through the Wood, the most honest lament of the many we have offered up since the leaving of our warriors.  Our tears mingle and fall to the earth.  Others look at us from their fires, dead-eyed and sullen, too numbed by their own grief to care about ours.  The wailing goes on and on, rising and falling with each indrawn breath.  When our voices exhaust themselves, we slump into one another and whimper and hum. 

     She leaves soon after with her stew, returning a few moments later with it freshly washed.  I try to smile my thanks, but my mouth has forgotten how.  I take the pot and make my stew, and when it is done I carry it to my flet.  I am relieved to find that Rumil has gotten dressed in my absence.  The rich aroma of the broth rouses him, and he rises from the bed to limp over to the steaming kettle.

     "Eru be thanked," he murmurs, and takes a deep, revivifying breath.

     I dish out the stew and totter over to the bed.  I have no appetite.  I don't think I will ever crave nourishment again.  I watch him gobble the stew.  Haldir's cloak lies crumpled on the floor by the bed, and I reach down and pick it up with numb fingers.  I stroke the supple cloth obsessively.  It was the last thing ever to caress his skin, and I cannot get that out of my mind.  

     As darkness draws down, he finishes the stew.  He moves to lie down on the floor, but I shake my head.  He deserves to lie in comfort after so many weeks on the hard ground.  I move to the floor by the door and pull my knees to my chest.  He squeezes my shoulder in thanks before lying down.  I nod and drape Haldir's red cloak over my legs.  I watch him as he wanders dreaming paths.  I never sleep again.

     The night passes slowly, and in the morning the Lady and Lord come to count those who have returned.  The devastation of our warriors was all but complete.  Nearly two thousand joined the war march.  The counting by the dawn's light reveals sixty-one warriors.

17 Tuile,

     Almost two seasons have passed since the slaughter of our warriors.  For the last time, the people of Lothlorien gather at the edge of the Wood.  This time, they do not stand as one.  They are divided, twenty-four against two thousand.  There is no anger, only sadness and confusion.  The twenty-four stand apart, hands linked and heads held high.

     "We will not go."

     The Lady looks at me, at us, with compassionate eyes.  Behind her, the rest of the people of the Golden Wood stand with lanterns at their sides.  They are leaving for the Undying Lands.  There is a murmur of astonishment that we have chosen to forego the bliss that is our right as Elves.  But so we have chosen.

     "We will not go."

     "There is nothing for you here.  Our time has ended," the Lady says softly.

     "Neither is there anything for me in Valinor.  Haldir rests in Mandos, never to return to me.  Without him, I have no joy, no peace.  What good are the fruits of Valinor if I cannot share them with him whom I love?  If I am to be alone, I will be alone here, where my memories are best."

     "Haldir would not wish this for you."

     "You know not what he would wish.  You knew nothing of him.  You asked of him the greatest sacrifice and gave him nothing in return, and when he died, you offered me neither comfort nor peace," I hiss, hostility creeping into my voice.

     She knows she cannot sway me.  She looks to the others.  "So say you all?"  Her voice is haunting, seductive.

     She is met with stony silence.  We twenty-four are the wives and daughters of the captains and generals of the vanguard, we whose husbands and sons went as certain blade fodder.  Bitterness has festered in our hearts like wormwood.  Our souls and hearts died with those we lost, and we feel no more kinship with our people.

     She inclines her head in surrender.  "May the light of the Valar shine upon you all," she whispers, and turns away.

     She leads the people away, the slow procession wending gracefully through the trees and across the grassy plain.  We watch them impassively as they go, stoic even as our hearts throb painfully at the parting.  We know our vigil will cost us dear-has cost us dear-but we will hold it until the last.  We will wait for the lost warriors to return.  We will not forsake them.

     Galadriel disappears on the horizon, and the forest is plunged into darkness.  She was its light, its heart, and without her it will fade away and die.  The silence is complete.  Not even a small animal disturbs the underbrush.  All around us the abandoned flets loom out of the shadows, forlorn and shabby without their owners to give them light and warmth.  Now only twenty-five remain of the great mass of Lorien-folk that once dwelt here.  Lord Celeborn tarries here with us, for he has not yet wearied of Middle-Earth.  It bolsters our spirits to know that he will be here with us, as a reminder of what once was.

     I linger at the wood's edge, Haldir's red cloak in my hands.  I have carried it with me since Rumil brought it to me.  I will never let it go.  With a silent farewell to those who have chosen the easier path, I turn and walk to Lord Celeborn's hall.  Our hopeless vigil has begun 

13 Rhiw, 3123, Fourth Age,

     Seven hundred years in the reckoning of Men have come and gone since the Galadhrim departed these shores, and still we wander here, gliding like wraiths among the fading, dying, rotting trees.  We drift like phantoms, bodies without souls.  We cannot die, though we greatly desire it.  We are bound by our oath to await the return of the lost warriors, and we must honor it.

     Lord Celeborn no longer walks with us.  He took the path to the Undying Lands two hundred years ago, longing for his proud Noldor wife.  It aggrieved us to lose his calming presence; he was our tie to days of bygone glory.  The days have grown long and dreary since his passing, but we take comfort in the knowledge that he has achieved what we all wish for.  Reunion with those from whom we have been sundered.

     Not a single word has been uttered here since our Lord went into the West.  Speech is of no further use to us.  We are united in common purpose, to wait even unto the end of the world for those we love.  Our hearts speak for our tongues.  We drift over the dry, desiccated leaves in mute communion, grieving alone together.

     No one has set foot in this forest.  The stories of the Elves still linger in the hearts of Men, and those who do not fear the Elves fear the evil spirits that speak in malevolent whispers and flitter amid the trees seeking to steal their souls.  This is a shunned place, a black place in their superstitious minds.  Most of the animals have fled its borders in search of greener, living lands.  Only we cling to this tomb.  It is all we know.

     I walk the same path I have always walked.  My hand opens and closes, gripping a cloak that is no longer there.  It rotted away to nothing centuries ago, but still I reach for it, seeking its reassurance.  In my heart I know I will never find what I seek.  I think we all understood this long ago, but we cannot afford to relinquish our frail hopes after nursing them for so long.  It would mean that we have failed the warriors who fell on the forgotten killing fields, that we have given up on our love for our mates.  It would be the ultimate betrayal.

     And so we meet on the borders of the Wood each night and look to the north, waiting and hoping to see the glint of starlight on golden armor.  We wait for the tramp of marching feet to ring out across the open field.  We wait to hear joyful shouts and song as they catch sight of beloved faces peering out from the trees.  We wait for the lost.  We wait.  And we wait.

     The wait has been so long.  I hope we do not wait in vain.    


End file.
